Abstract [en]

“Strange matings” is a quotation from African American science-fiction writer Octavia Butler’s fifth novel, Wild Seed (1980) – it also serves as the title of the second book entirely devoted to Butler’s work.[1] Nothing could be more appropriate since there are intimate encounters between humans and different species in a number of her narratives from the Clayarks (a quadruped hybrid human-alien species) in her first published novel Patternmaster (1974) to the Ina (vampires) in her last novel, Fledgling (2005). The protagonist of this novel is a genetic experiment, a hybrid, whose African American ancestry is the solution to a problem but, at the same time, means that her family members are murdered due to enduring racist ideas originating in American slavery, which in this speculative novel has spread to another humanoid species. In many of her novels, Butler addresses the racist notion of miscegenation both literally and figuratively. Many of her main characters are what other characters often regard as miscegenated offspring; many are also placed in situations where they have to embrace, or at least accept, inter-species biological relations and reproduce differently in order to survive and possibly develop. In this paper, I will focus on how Butler portrays “strange matings” and imagines different family constellations for hybrid protagonists against the backdrop of American ideas of miscegenation.